The LR Baggs Para Acoustic D.I. is one of the best devices you can purchase if you are playing acoustic live music with a pickup in your instrument. This little box contains a 5-band equalizer, tunable notch, presence, and midrange controls, adjustable gain, and phase inversion along with being a fully functional direct input box that allows output of either 1/4 inch or XLR to plug into the PA/soundboard. It runs on a 9 volt battery, and gets incredible battery life at that.

This box is really an acoustic musician’s dream come true. I play the banjo, and it takes what would otherwise be a harsh electric sounding tone, and transforms it into a warm, realistic, and convincing acoustic sound. It also gives you the ability to custom tailor your tone, infinitely. Depending on the PA/monitor setup, you can tweak the frequency emphasis to highlight or cut any range. Anyone that plays live acoustic music will know that most sound people usually don’t get the instruments equalized all that well. This device enables you to give them a huge head start, by passing them a quality signal that’s already EQ’d to your preference. I’d be willing to bet that they are loved as much by sound professionals as they are by the musicians themselves. I’ve seen this device used with great results for acoustic guitar, bass, fiddle/violin, mandolin, cello, accordion, etc, etc.

Durability is exactly what you’d expect from a piece of professional grade stage gear. I’d be willing to bet that it could be run over by a car and still function. I’ve seen these units after years on the road, and they are only missing some of their brown paint.

The size is also a huge benefit here. It’s just slightly larger than your average guitar pedal, which makes it really convenient to throw in a gig bag. Similar systems by other companies cost much more and require rack mounting. This isn’t to say that those other devices won’t give you better sound and more flexibility, but this box is all that 90% of stage musicians will ever need out of an EQ unit/DI box.

I really haven’t been able to find a downside to this thing over the past year and a half that I’ve been using it. I will amend this post if I have anything else to add down the road…

As you can probably gather by now, I live in Boulder, Colorado. Aside from being a beautiful place to live with a million things to do, we also have an outdoor pedestrian mall known as Pearl Street. This is also where I happen to work, so I find myself out meandering on the mall during lunch. Today, Jonny Ringo and I were walking up to Chipoltle to grab a burrito, when we noticed that the enemy was upon us.

The summer in Boulder on the Pearl Street Mall is always accompanied by clipboard toting Greenpeace and Environment Colorado employees. When you’re out trying to take a break from work, they ask you stupid fucking questions like “Do you care about our environment?” or “Do you have 30 seconds to save the earth?”. No assholes, I don’t. I’m on my fucking lunch break, and you’ve asked me the same question for the past 19 days straight.

Today, I told one of the chicks that I didn’t have the time to talk to her, as I was on break, and she asked if she could walk with me and Ringo. Way to put me in an awkward situation, bitch. You’ve already asked me your rhetorical question that makes me look like I don’t give a shit about the environment, and now you have the nerve to force me to be an asshole on top of it, by telling you that I don’t want you anywhere around me?

The City of Boulder has a law preventing panhandling on the mall. This really makes me wonder how these people are allowed to do what they are doing, considering that they need permission from the city to be out there doing this. How the hell is what they are doing any different than a bum asking for change so that he can get a bite to eat?

Holy Fucking Frytastic! Bring your wallet and your difibulator cause it’s on at Pappadeaux. Pappadeaux is a Creole and Cajun themed seafood kitchen. Bacons, Johnny Ringo, the lovely Jenn and I visited this glory to gluttony one night after about three bourbon and cokes. Okay, only I had three bourbon and cokes.

We were seated and began to peruse the story of the menu. This thing was expansive! I am pretty sure Noah was in the back herding two of every animal into a vat of hot boiling oil. Despite Ringo’s worry about the chewiness of gator meat, we decided to start our feast with the fried alligator tail appetizer and the fried calamari. The alligator was not chewy at all and came with a creole dipping so good it’d make ya wanna smack yo mama! The Calamari was like biting into a soft cloud of titties. Whoever was on the fryer that night was a true artist.

At this point I was about four drinks and two deep fried appetizers in and was starting to get full. However, I was now in cajun country where 1000 calories is just getting started. Not to mention the stuffed swordfish on the wall was giving me the eye like I was some pussy who can’t handle his fried food. So I did what any man would do and ordered the crawfish platter. I was served a platter roughly the size of Rocky Dennis’ head. On one side was about 30 fried crawfish. On the other was a mess of crawfish etoufee. Separating the two like coach in a high school brawl was a heap of dirty rice. For the southern culturally deficient, dirty rice is rice with meat in it such as ground beef. Often it is chicken livers or giblets with peppers, celery and onion, however, Pappadeaux uses the less adventurous ground beef. The dirty rice was perfectly mixed in with the etoufee. It was a nice break from all of the fried food. I was actually starting to sweat peanut oil.

Bacons had the King Crab Legs which were definitely good. However, the best thing about his dish was the ingenious little device Pappadeaux provides to remove the sweet, succulent crab meat from its calcified prison. It’s a mix between garden shears and scissors and was perfect for getting through the shell without ripping your hands apart.

Jenn had the fried oyster platter. Once again, Frymaster J showed his prowess by presenting a perfectly cooked pillow of oyster goodness blanketed by a crispy, crunchy batter. Jenn actually only ate two of these as Bacons and myself assaulted her plate like a couple of chimpanzees.

After all of this our waiter had the audacity to offer dessert. We had key lime pie, but not before I asked our waiter how many customers he has seen fall out in cardiac arrest. He said he has not seen it yet, but was waiting for the day. I’m pretty sure the staff has a betting pool going on this, but I digress. The pie was a perfect cold creamy treat to settle the oil settling in our guts.

I then went home so full that I molted my skin and did not eat for 3 days. And by 3 days I mean 3 hours.

Overall, Pappadeaux delivers exactly what it promises. There were steamed, grilled and boiled options on the menu, but an overwhelming majority of the food is deep fried, just like it is in ‘Nawlins. If you prefer steamed fish and a watercress salad, then you are advised to find somewhere in Boulder. If you got a wild hair and want to strap on the feedbag then this is definitely your place.

The guy above…yeah that guy…he is a dick. Not just a small adolescent dick, but a raging, throbbing-purple-veins-exposed dick. If you watch him regularly then you are probably a dick too. Either that or you have no soul. Dick (I am just going to start calling him that for the rest of this commentary) has no soul either. Dick’s contribution to society: Scaring the crap out of simple Americans and contributing directly to the downfall of U.S media. Did I mentioned he was a dick? How did dick become a dick? Let’s see…shit-for-brains was born in New York City, went to a private Catholic high school where he was probably molested with a yard stick and then Marist College where he was a punter on the National Club Football Association. A punter! After dick graduated he played semi-pro baseball but failed a tryout for the New York Mets. He then attended Boston University and graduated with a master’s in broadcast journalism. So how did he become a dick? Well during this entire time he probably never got laid and had to drug women and men to sleep with him. He also probably developed a sense of disillusionment that he was better than everyone else and that people care about what he thought. Turns out a lot of Americans do care what he thinks. Turns out that 2.58 million people tune in nightly. Fucking morons. Yes, you heard me. If you watch him you are a fucking moron!